What We Do

Farmers involved

Stephen Hobbs, Red Tractor beef farmer

Stephen is a 3rd generation farmer, with a 400 acre farm in Buckinghamshire that is home to his herd of 160 cattle. Generations of Hobbs' have farmed around Bovingdon, Flaunden areas of South Bucks and Hertfordshire. In 1927 Stephen’s grandfather and his young family moved north to North Crawley and in 1953 he was able to purchase Rectory Farm where Stephen’s father established the Lambert Herd of Friesian cows. Stephen joined the family partnership.

Stephen assesses each cow on a daily basis to ensure they are happy and healthy. They are given straw beds and fed on a diet that includes cereals, which Stephen also produces on his farm.

Each cow has its own unique ear tag and individual passport which includes, like a human passport, their passport number, age, family name and where they have been. As part of Red Tractor’s environmental requirements all manure produced gets reused as fertilizer and is not used on grazing pastures or areas that could contaminate local rivers and streams.

Stephen is proud to be producing food to the Red Tractor standard:

“The Red Tractor logo is a fantastic tool for farmers to tell shoppers about how their food is produced and where it comes from - we meet strict farming standards and are independently inspected to ensure shoppers can have confidence in their food, where it has been sourced from and ultimately Trust The Tractor.”

Sarah Long, Meat Processor said: ‘Good quality meat you need a happy, stress free animal because any stress will affect the quality of the meat. Red Tractor helps with this in terms of welfare – its standards make sure the animals are looked after and reared with good quality feed, straw bedding, helps farmers manage vet visits, tagging and all those important elements paramount to rearing quality cattle.’